Beast Mode - by Austin Grossman (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

From acclaimed novelist and veteran game designer Austin Grossman, a hilarious, unfiltered account of the people behind the games we can't put down--a Kitchen Confidential for the video game industry.

In 1991, Austin Grossman had a Harvard degree, no direction, and rent to pay. He answered a newspaper ad and landed among a group of brilliant misfits who were building entire worlds inside a computer. Over the next three decades, he helped create classics like System Shock, Deus Ex, and Dishonored. He also helped make some spectacular disasters.

In Beast Mode, Grossman tells the inside story of how entertainment's ugly stepchild took over the world. Grossman has seen the industry's wildest ambitions up close. His career took from a small independent gaming studio in a nondescript office park to DreamWorks, where Hollywood hoped to conquer gaming, and Magic Leap, where investors bet billions on reinventing reality. He introduces readers to the brilliant programmers, impossible designers, and unforeseeable breakthroughs that produced games people still play decades later. Through it all, he recounts the failures as frankly as the successes, especially when the mistakes were his own.

With caustic wit and a novelist's eye for character, Grossman captures the pleasures and pains of making video games for a living. Beast Mode shows what drives the people building our virtual worlds and describes a culture whose influence extends well beyond anything we play. Whether you play or not, video games are changing your world. Beast Mode introduces you to the people making it happen.

About the Author

AUSTIN GROSSMAN is a novelist and game designer. His novels include Soon I Will Be Invincible, YOU: a novel, and Crooked. Soon I Will Be Invincible was nominated for the 2007 John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize. His writing has also appeared in Granta, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. His game credits include Ultima Underworld 2, System Shock, Trespasser, Deus Ex, Epic Mickey, and Dishonored, which received the 2012 BAFTA award for Best Game. He is currently Director of Game Design and Interactive Storytelling at Magic Leap. He has an M.A. in Performance Studies from N.Y.U .and is A.B.D. in English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley.